Yea, But Is It Legal?

What is this site all about?

This is a community music remixing site featuring remixes and samples licensed under Creative Commons licenses.

Music on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons license. You are free to download and sample from music on this site and share the results with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Some songs might have certain restrictions, depending on their specific licenses. Each submission is marked clearly with the license that applies to it.

Sometimes, however, a contributor might accidentally upload copyrighted materials he or she doesn’t have permission for. If you know of such a case or are the copyright holder of something posted here without your permission or a Creative Commons license, please let us know.

Can I post my remix to my own site or AP?

Yes, provided you’re not making commercial use of the thing. Many tracks on this site (e.g. by the Beastie Boys, Chuck D and the Fine Arts Militia, and My Morning Jacket) are under some form of Noncommercial license, which allows file-sharing and sampling but prohibits any commercial use whatsoever. Many other tracks on the site are under licenses which allow noncommercial file-sharing and even commercial use of samples. (Be careful: the uploads under the Sampling licenses can not be used in advertising or to promote anything other than the songs involved.)

So you don’t have to post your remix to ccMixter. Yes you can post it to say, Acid Planet. The licenses do not require that you post your creations here.

Who Should Register on ccMixter?

Music Lovers

If you are just here to browse and listen to music then you don’t need to do anything more. Please enjoy the music. A good place to start is with our editorial staff that watches for the best of the site.

If you do chose to register you can create recommendations and playlists that you can then easily download to music players. You can leave reviews, and interact in the forums, pick favorites and more.

Producers, Singers, Sound Designers

Registering gives you all the benefits and privileges that come from having an account. You get your own artist’s page where you can upload your own music, cut-ups of other artists and loop libraries.

If you would like to submit a remix ccMixter then you need to register and create an account. Once logged in, you will see options for submitting sampled remixes and samples to the site.

Songwriters

We encourage artists who produce original material to post submissions of their work to ccMixter in order to make even more music available for legal sampling. However, you should submit individual tracks (a.k.a. stems) of your work to give the producer or DJ an even richer, more creative chance at reworking your material.

ccMixter is a remix site, we will not accept your back catalog. Creative Commons also sponsors and partners with other sites (such as the The Internet Archive and Our Media) where it is more than appropriate to put all of your material into the Commons.

What file formats does ccMixter accept?

We accept most popular formats of audio (mp3, wmv, ogg, etc.) For sample library submissions we also accept .ZIP archives. There is are hard limit of 10 MB per upload for either case.

I'm having trouble uploading...

First of all we are sorry you are having problems. There are several known issues with uploading that are being addressed. In the meantime here are some things that might help the process:

* Remember that files over 10 megabytes will not upload.
* Turn off all spy-bot, firewall and other resident blocking software. Sorry, but these have been known to interfere with uploading.
* If you have a file that close to 10 megabytes and you are on a slow Internet connection may also be an issue because our site may ‘time out’ thinking something has gone wrong and abort the upload. If you suspect this may be happening and you do not have access to a broadband connection then you might consider re-encoding your music file with lower resolution quality (96kbs or in the case of VBR a lower quality setting). If you are trying to upload a sample library try breaking up the ZIP archive into smaller pieces.
* If you are trying to upload fully mixed original song and don’t see the proper menu items it is because you have reached the quota for non-remixes.
* We have recently fixed a problem with older Safari browsers when uploading. Or at least we think and hope we fixed it. If you are having problems uploading with an older Safari please let us know.
* Our MP3 verifier is very particular about the validity of MP3 files so if there is any issue in the file it will be rejected. There are two known issues with MP3 encoders that we have caused these issues:

o Some tools like iTunes and Audacity use the LAME MP3 installed in your system (usually by some other tool like Quicktime). All versions of LAME between 3.90 and 3.92 have a frame synch bug in the DLL when running in CBR mode. These versions are over four years old and you should upgrade to the latest version — typically this should happen when you upgrade the program that installed it in the first place (like Quicktime).

If you use a VBR mode in your current LAME encoder or simply use another tool to encode the MP3, then you should be fine.

If you are brave you can upgrade your system’s LAME encoder to the latest one by tracking one down yourself from say the old MAZ site which may may still work or from free-codecs.com but Creative Commons does NOT stand by the veracity of those sites, use them at your own risk.

More Questions?

Who Owns My Music?

You own the music you make. If you used samples, then the sampled artist still owns the copyright to his or her samples — you can use them as part of your music as long as you live up to the conditions and restrictions of whatever license applies to the samples you used.

Is music I submit automatically under a Creative Commons license?

Yes.

Whether I like it or not?

Yes. If you would prefer to keep your music “all rights reserved,” that’s your choice — just don’t submit it to ccMixter.